Ed Schlotzhauer

An artists journey

Tag: psychology

Love the Unlovable
Do you ever take any bad pictures? Of course. We all do. Some of us more than others. But instead of immediately deleting the bad ones, I suggest living with them a while. Love the unlovable ones. Study them. We can learn from them.
What is “bad”?
What constitutes a bad picture? That is subjective and/or technical.
There are clearly, technically bad pictures. Badly out of focus. Poorly timed so that the subject has left the frame. Badly exposed. Handheld at too slow a shutter speed so it is unintentionally blurry (as opposed to intentionally blurry). Most of us would agree that these are bad and we probably immediately dismiss them as useless.
Other than that, a bad picture is one not up to our expectations. This is subjective. A bad picture to a highly experienced photographer may seem excellent to a novice. If you judge it bad, it is bad.
A related question for another time is, how do you know it is bad? Learning to critique your own work is challenging. If you can’t, how can you know what is good?
But in most cases, bad is obvious to us and we can learn from bad pictures. Humans generally learn more from failure than success.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
It is your picture
First, though, let’s acknowledge that this is your picture. You took it. Sure, there are exceptions. I have sometimes accidentally pressed the shutter while I was carrying my camera and gotten random sidewalks or blurred bushes. That is a clear, unintentional mistake. All the other bad pictures were deliberately taken photos.
But in all cases, it is our picture. No one else is responsible for it. These bad pictures didn’t just happen for some reason we don’t understand. They did not magically appear on your memory card. We raised the camera and pressed the shutter.
There’s a reason you took it
We intentionally took these bad pictures I am talking about. And we did not intend them to be bad. Something happened between the intent and the execution to cause it to not work.
You thought there was at least a reasonable chance that this would be a usable photo. The picture is probably not totally bad. Not meeting our expectations does not necessarily mean it was bad in all respects. There are many possible reasons it was a failure.
I have talked about the chain of steps between our brain and a final print. Failures can happen anywhere along that path. Specifically, any of the technical decisions required in camera to capture the image could be faulty. It is easy for the exposure or the focus to be off, especially in the excitement of capturing a good scene.
When you discover that the failure was a technical problem, that is easy. Figure out what you did wrong, so you won’t make the same mistake again. This is just improving your technical skills.
Or maybe the failure was in your head. As you were visualizing the shot you want, maybe you weren’t clear in your own mind about the best framing and composition. Maybe it is inexperience. You look at the resulting shot and think “no, that’s just not quite right.” If you’re lucky, the scene is still there, and you can work it more. If not, you try to determine how you would approach the same thing next time.
In all these cases, the bad picture provides an opportunity to learn how to do better next time. We will benefit from taking the time to learn what we can from the experience.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Was it an experiment?
Another big area of failure for me is experiments that did not work out. I experiment a lot. It comes from curiosity and an ongoing process of wondering “what if…” I often push the edge of my comfort zone.
Maybe it is intentional camera movement (ICM) at different shutter speeds and with different types of movement, just to see the effect. Perhaps it is shooting a mountain stream at different shutter speeds to determine the amount of water blur I like best today. Maybe it is trying shots straight up or straight down, just to see what I can do.
There is no end of these. I might use a slow shutter on a passing train to see what happens. Sometimes I will take shots of a sprinkler in a park, just to see what I can do with it. Bad weather is a great motivator for me to get out and try things. Travel is a great source. Can I get interesting pictures that are not the typical travel shots? If there is great light on something, I will shoot it. Just to see what I can get.
The possibilities are endless. That is part of the fun and challenge. But when shooting experiments, I know that most of the shots will be failures. They may all be failures. I expect it and am more curious than upset to examine them.
That time when you do get something good in an unusual situation is pure joy. It makes all the failures worthwhile.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Out of your control
A lot of what we attempt to do relies on things out of our control. The light may change before we get the shot. The subject may move. Clouds come up and dampen that reflection you were trying to capture. Clouds go away and leave you with an uninteresting clear blue sky. It got windy, so everything is moving. You had a day set aside for photography, but it was a blizzard.
Unless we are setting up a still-life scene or controlling a set, we are at the mercy of conditions and events. We must learn to roll with the conditions. When our planned shot goes away, find a better one. Use your artistic talent to make something great of what is there. That is being resilient.
The bad shots may open our eyes to new learning. We may discover we really like B&W scenes with dramatic clouds. Or we enjoy intimate details of scenes rather than only grand landscapes. A new world may present itself in a decaying, rusty truck.
Keep them permanently?
There will always be discussion about keeping the mistakes or less good images. Some photographers say they keep everything except technically really bad pictures, e.g., out of focus.
I will give my opinion, but you probably do not want to listen to me on this. Every photographer adopts a workflow that fits his style. Part of mine is that I shoot a lot, and I don’t hang on to pictures unless I can convince myself there is a reason to.
I have given some insights on my process (slow edits, etc.). Part of it is a multi-step editing process to promote images. Good ones rise to the top with time. A side effect is that bad ones get dropped out and discarded. Eliminated. Deleted from my disk.
If I shoot several frames of the same scene, I seldom feel compelled to keep more than the best and maybe 1 or 2 other promising views. The rest are gone.
Since I usually shoot handheld, I often shoot 2 or 3 duplicates to ensure I can select the sharpest. After I select the keeper, the others are deleted.
It’s brutal. Many people will disagree. That’s OK. It is my style and workflow. I have never found myself in the position of wishing I had one of those deleted frames instead of what I kept. But, when in doubt, keep them until you can figure out your feelings.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Learn from mistakes
But the point of the article is that our mistakes are a valuable learning for us. Sometimes, they can be as valuable as the keepers. We should examine them, determine why they were a mistake, use it to build our skill or our artistic vision. Every failure is an opportunity.
Failure often means we stepped out of the safe rut we were in and tried new things. The failure rate is high when we are innovating. But so is our growth rate as artists.
So be courageous. Choose to eagerly adapt to conditions, to try new things, to explore new ways of seeing, to look carefully at your bad pictures. Our bad pictures help us along the way. Learn to love the unlovable ones. Learn from them.
February 18, 2026
Does the Image Find You?
Does the Image Find You? It is often repeated. I don’t think I agree with this. Maybe it is just a matter of semantics.
It finds you
I have often heard it said that the image finds you more than you find it. I can’t find a print reference, but I know Kai Hornung said it in a very good recent Nook presentation on Inspiration.
This sounds reasonable in a Zen sort of way. And sometimes I agree with it. I know it is sometimes frustrating to go out determined to “make an image.” They don’t seem to be there when that is our attitude. But then we give up and put our camera away and suddenly images seem to come out of hiding. They are everywhere. We frantically get our camera out again and snap away.
Was this a case of the image finding us? Or was it us taking the mental barriers away and finally being able to see the images that were there?
©Ed Schlotzhauer
It doesn’t care
This leads to my quibble with the quote. The responsibility is with us, not the potential image.
My cynical nature does not believe images come looking for us. I think they don’t care. They just are there. Images don’t look for us, they just go about their life on their own terms. They are doing their own thing with no particular interest in or need of us.
Think of a scene like a child playing out in the yard. They are in their own magic world. They may be acting out roles or playing an imaginary game or just moving and enjoying themselves. It could be them following their curiosity on a voyage of discovery.
Beautiful, meaningful images are being generated constantly while they play. Not for us. Not because of us. But they are there for the taking if we let ourselves see them and react to them.
In moments like that, the best we can do is be aware but be careful to not interfere. Don’t get in the way or interrupt the flow. It is not about us.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Wisdom of Jay Maisel
So, if images do not come looking for us, all the responsibility is on us to find them. We must stay receptive to what is happening around us.
Jay Maisel is one of my favorite photographers to quote. He is a rich source of wisdom.
Here are a few of his gems that I believe apply to this subject:
It’s always around, you just don’t see it.
It is important to realize that the pictures are everywhere, not just where you want or expect them to be.
Don’t overthink things in front of you. If it moves you, shoot it. If it is fun, shoot it. If you’ve never seen it before, shoot it.
If you’re out there shooting, things will happen for you. If you’re not out there, you’ll only hear about it.
What you’re shooting at doesn’t matter. The real question is, does it give you joy?
You can’t just turn on when something happens. You have to be turned on all the time. Then things happen.
Had I not been told to look, I would have quit, ignorant of what was really there, because I had “made plans” and was wearing visual and emotional blinders that limited my perception and vision.
Try to go out empty and let your images fill you up.
Being receptive
From these quotes and from my own experience and beliefs I think I can safely say good photography is not a passive experience. In most cases, we can’t just sit around and wait for images to come find us.
Pictures are everywhere, but when we try to make them happen on our schedule and to our expectations, it often doesn’t work. What Jay called “visual and emotional blinders that limited my perception.”
When we limit our perception, we are usually going to miss the exciting things that are happening instead. And as he says, the pictures are there, just probably not where and when we expect them. Sometimes you have to turn around. The interest may be happening somewhere else.
One of Jay’s most famous themes is that we must “go out empty.” We must put our expectations aside and be open to see the images that are there, not trying to “make” them happen. And the images are going to happen where and when they happen. We must always be ready when we’re out shooting. After they happen is usually too late to react.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Whichever, take it
So, whether you believe images come looking for us or you believe we must go looking for them, do it. Don’t let semantics get in the way.
Not much advice is universal. I realize that commercial photographers always do planned and staged shots. That is not what I do so I don’t talk about it. I am just talking about what works for me.
The rest of us who rely on everyday magic must be ready, mentally and with our equipment at hand. Be prepared to respond when we recognize that great image. Get out of your own way. See it – shoot it.
Let your images fill you up. Collect them with gratitude.
February 11, 2026
Moments 2
Moments are frozen instants in the flow of time. Our life is about moments. Most art, but especially photography, is about capturing moments.
Flow of time
Time is like a stream flowing around us. It goes from infinity to infinity as far as we can perceive. But we can’t stop it or dam it up. We can’t even jump in the stream and ride a moment forever. Instead, we must watch it flow by and hear the clock ticking.
Time itself may be virtually infinite, but our time is not. We have been alive a certain time, but we have no idea how long we have left. There may be many years left, or our time may be done tomorrow.
Many of us live our lives as if we have infinite time left. That is simpler and less troubling than acknowledging the impermanence of our existence. So, we become numb to the passing of time. We bury our self in our job or other responsibilities or diversions. Days flow into weeks into months into years and we barely realize it. Someday we look back and wonder where the time went.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Art is moments
All we can clearly perceive is the current moment we are living in. The past is a sequence of moments that are gone. The future is a potential sequence of moments we cannot yet see.
A characteristic of a lot of art, especially photography, is that it records moments. They may be beautiful moments, or touching ones, or poignant ones, or frightening ones. But the moment itself is the art.
Art portrays these moments so we can look at them from outside the time stream. It gives us a new perspective on the moment. Whether the art captures the moment as a 2-dimensional image to hang on our wall, or a 3-dimensional form, or a poem or story we can visit whenever we want, they re-create for us a moment or a scene we want to save.
One of the powerful aspects of our art is that it is concrete. That is, it is fixed, unchanging, staying as it was created. This plucks moments out of the stream of time and preserves them for us, beautiful and unchanging. A photograph is a frozen moment.
What we remember
Our memories are really a collection of remembered moments. Do you remember what you did at your job last month? Probably not, but you remember that time last month when your boss came to you and praised you on doing a great job on something.
Do you remember college? Or is your memory based on some great times, some miserable times, a time when a professor said something that opened a whole new world of thought for you?
In our lives and with our families we tend to remember events, certain happenings – in other words, moments. Everything else is just a blur.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Moments we miss
Astounding moments are flowing by us all the time. Mostly, we don’t notice. Those moments are lost and can never be regained.
Mindfulness is a practice of being aware and “in the moment.” It attempts to let us forget the past and not worry about the future but instead be very aware of what is happening right now.
Being mindful is a good thing, but when you look up “mindfulness” it often gets co-opted by types of eastern mysticism. Ignore that. The concept is simple, even if the practice may be hard.
When I say we should be mindful I simply mean we should practice greater awareness of the world around us and the way we are responding to it. As artists this is especially important. There is beauty and interest almost everywhere. Fascinating moments are happening all the time wherever we are. Mindfulness is teaching our self to see them. We must notice moments.
This usually involves unplugging from our technology and stepping away from the fast pace of our lives for a bit. A walk is a great tool for me. Being outdoors and getting exercise helps me see more of what is going on. Of course, this only works if we put the phone in our pocket and take off the headphones, freeing our self from our tether to the machine.
But being there and seeing the moments are two different things. We must be open to the experience. Pause and marvel at small moments. At common, ordinary things around us that can become magical sometimes.
The way we live our moments is the way we live our lives.
Annie Dillard
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Photography is about moments
By its nature, photography is about capturing moments. The shutter opens on a scene in the “real world” for a fixed slice of time. The sensor records what is happening during that time slice. What we get is not imagined or fake. We have captured a moment. If we are good, it is a worthwhile moment.
Of course, I can create fantasy art that is impossible or surreal. I enjoy doing that. But most photography is a relatively straight capture of a real scene.
The typical photograph is a portrait of a moment. It is not the moment itself, but an abstract image of it. We have plucked it out of the stream of time and set it aside for contemplation, to show other people what was there that they could have seen. Since there is such a rich flow of moments passing before us, one of the challenges is to develop the experience, the “eye”, to recognize a worthwhile moment as it is happening. In a sense, what Henri Cartier-Bresson called a “decisive moment”.
Shoot it when you see it. Painters may be able to hold a moment in their memory well enough to be able to sketch and paint it back at their studio. But photographers must react immediately. Capture it or lose it. The famous Jay Maisel so rightly said “Always shoot it now. It won’t be the same when you go back.“
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Prints freeze moments
Even in the realm of photography, there is the special case of the print. A print takes this fleeting moment and casts it in a permanent form onto a substrate like paper or canvas or metal.
The moment becomes a real object. It has weight and form and texture. This is important because by being an object of substance, we have a different relationship with it. An ephemeral moment has been transported to a physical object we can see and touch and hold.
Even more, it has permanence. Memories are unreliable things. They fade and change. A print holds the moment up for us to see for many years to come. We can come back to it and relive it at will. Maybe only to remind ourselves that great moments are happening all the time and we should be more mindful of them.
In computer speak, a print is read-only-memory. That is a technology that, once written, can never be altered. Once the print is printed, it is an unchangeable record of the artist’s intent at that moment. The digital file can be altered and a new, modified print can be created, but the original print is fixed for its lifetime.
A print celebrates a moment that is worth keeping among the continuous flow of time.
Precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to time’s relentless melt.
Susan Sontag
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Moments
Be intensely aware of moments. They are our life. Each moment we have should be precious to us. Don’t let them drift away unnoticed.
As photographers, we should be on the lookout for the moments we want to record. To do this we must be very aware of the world around us, mindful, in other words.
We have the privilege of capturing moments and presenting them to people so they can marvel at the moments that have gone by. This is one of the things artists do. This is awesome.
January 14, 2026
New Year’s Greetings
This is scheduled to come out New Year’s Eve (on the Western calendar). This is going to be mainly a new year’s greeting. I am going to ramble on non-photographic topics this time.
Reflection
It is just a date on a calendar, but there is something about a new year that makes us thoughtful. Maybe it is the act of having to take one calendar down and replace it with a nice new one – if you still use paper calendars. That seems to make it clear that an old year has ended and a new one is starting.
Whatever the reason, there seems something more solemn than the Times Square ball dropping. We think to the past and the future.
Looking back
Despite our social media profiles that show everyone constantly happy and successful, we know that is not true. It is the illusion we want to have everyone believe.
The reality is we are all human and share the human condition. We get sick. We have conflicts. People close to us move away or die. Some of us lost our jobs this year.
But, on the other hand, most people recover from illness, new jobs are found, new friends are made, babies are born. We see that life goes on.
Life is a churning mix of good and bad. Sometimes we are being tossed in the waves rather than surfing skillfully on top. But we rise. How we rise depends on our attitude.
Some ride these waves better than others, even though the problems are the same. Please let me suggest that one of the big differences is our faith. What is your faith centered in? How strong is it? A strong faith in God goes a long way toward helping us take a long view that things will work out for our good, because we know that right here, right now is not all we have to look forward to.
Looking forward
That new calendar you hang up is empty. Waiting to be filled with all of our activities. Over the course of the year, it will mark what we choose to do, where we spend our time, what we consider important.
Right now, it has the promise of a blank page. We can choose what to write. That seems to be what occupies our thoughts at this time.
Many of us make “New Year’s Resolutions.” Suggestions to ourselves of things we would like to do different the next year. I have stopped making New Year’s resolutions. A resolution has no weight of commitment. It is just saying some should do’s: I should lose weight, I should get more fit, I should go back to school and get a new career.
Let me suggest this is a good time to actually commit to a different path. If fitness is your problem, decide what kind of exercise is best for you, make a realistic plan – not “6-pack abs in 2 weeks”, and commit yourself to doing it. Start today. No excuses.
Whatever we choose to do requires determination. January 1st all the usual problems and demands start piling up. They fill our time and thoughts and quickly sweep away resolutions. Let your commitments stand strong. If you don’t make it happen, they will not get done.
The things we don’t do are often the things we regret most later in life.
Place of photography
Photography is very important to me. But it serves as a creative release I need. It is not the core of my life. I suspect it is the same for you.
If it is important but not the center of our world, we must look at it correctly.
We have a life to live that is not totally centered on photography. We must earn a living and probably support other people, we have family and friends who are very important to us, we take vacations, we learn, we take care of ourselves physically.
Life goes on. Photography is an important part of what I am, but not the center. I am much more than a photographer. I photograph when life lets me. After I take care of the important things.
Best wishes
I wish you sincere best wishes for the year ahead. I hope you will have clarity of purpose and alignment with your faith. Take care of yourself and others around you. And I hope you will shoot some amazing pictures!
December 31, 2025
Love The One You’re With
Good general advice is that we should photograph subjects we love. I want to bend it some and suggest we love the one you’re with.
Love our subjects
It seems good advice to say we should concentrate on photographing subjects we love. Then we will feel a strong draw and affection for it. We will think more and look deeper into what it means and what it can be.
We see it all the time. Some photographers only shoot landscape, others only portraits. People focus exclusively on food photography or mini-figures or architecture. There are hundreds of specialties.
That’s great. I agree that if we have an affinity for a subject, we should photograph it. It will be fun and rewarding. But it can be limiting.
But what if your only true photographic love is reefs in Fiji, or volcanoes in Iceland, or hidden temples in Malaysia? Unless you are retired with fat investments, most of us would not have the opportunity to do that very often.
Have you painted yourself into a corner in that case? Do we have to resolve that there’s nothing for me to shoot here where I live? I must wait until I can go to my dream location. But when I get there someday, I will kill it.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Song
For some reason I was reminded of the very old song by Stephen Stills, “Love the One You’re With“. Yes, I go back that far. I don’t remember hearing it recently, but this idea of shooting what you love must have triggered it.
The main theme of the song is “If you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with”. That is so 1970’s. It is good advice for causal relationships with groups of friends, but terrible advice for couples. But no marriage counseling here.
Love the one you’re with
Yes, it is great to be able to photograph the subjects and themes you love. But we don’t always get to do that. I recommend adopting a more mindful attitude of being attuned to what is around you.
If you are so exclusive that you will only photograph certain subjects I suggest getting checked for obsessive/compulsive tendencies. You are passing by many joys of discovery that happen when you let your curiosity take you down unexpected paths. And being so selective means, you miss the practice that comes from taking the opportunity to explore how to photography other things. Anytime we use our camera to take a picture, we are practicing our craft.
Instead of waiting exclusively for the thing you love, fall in love with what you find. It is great photographic practice, it is great mindfulness exercise, it keeps you engaged where you are, and you might find new love interests.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Mindfulness
Accepting the challenge of photographing things you did not know you were interested in requires re-orienting your mindset. It is that scary idea of practicing mindfulness.
Mindfulness used to have a negative connotation for me. I associated it with some of the ridiculous examples I see on the internet involving a deep spiritual philosophy, incense, yoga poses, chants, and, what seemed to me to be mind games. It is that for some.
But I already have a strong spiritual path, I don’t bend the way a 20-year-old yoga instructor does, and if I started changing mantras, I would burst out laughing at myself. Few of those things have much to do with photography, in my opinion.
Mindfulness in our art involves the mental discipline of staying aware of what is around us. Looking, being in tune with what is there, being receptive. And, going back to the original idea of this article, looking for and learning to appreciate the interest, even beauty, in what we find. Even to the extent of falling in love with the ordinary things around us.
©Ed Schlotzhauer
Challenge
Exercises like 52 Week Photo Challenges are popular. That is one reason there are so many of them. I know from experience that they are good learning experiences. They keep us trying new things and having to creatively find a solution for a word problem.
I don’t do these anymore, but mostly because am not competitive and because I find so many challenges around me all the time that I don’t want to distract myself. That’s just me. Don’t let me discourage you if you have not tried it.
If you are not going to do one of these scripted challenges, I encourage you to challenge yourself. Ignore your one great subject love. Go out wide open. Turn off the music and your phone. Walk around and look around. “Force” yourself to look more closely at what is there. Determine that you are going to shoot things you never photograph. See something and think “that is mildly interesting; how could I make it very interesting?” Discover that there are endless possibilities besides what you normally focus on.
it seems like I often come around to the idea of mindfulness in our photography. I guess it is one of my ongoing themes. Mindfulness seems to be joined to creativity. Mindfulness helps us discover interesting things. Creativity stimulates us to do something interesting with them.
It’s simple. That’s why it is so hard.
In your photography: Love The one you’re with.
December 24, 2025